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Sharif Hamadeh

The matrix of vulnerabilities that attend this state of statelessness raises an obvious question: if the Nakba is still in progress, then how will it end? Few people believe Annapolis holds the answer. As Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently admitted, “Nothing has been achieved in the negotiations with Israel yet.” Sharif Hamadeh comments. Read more about From the Nakba to Absurdistan

A teenage soldier in Tapuah, a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, shot to death four Palestinian citizens of Israel and injured several others last Thursday on a bus in Shafa’amr, a quiet Arab town in the north of Israel where I work. Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, denounced the shootings as an act of “terrorism” designed to “harm the fabric of relations among all Israeli citizens”, and threaten Israel’s “stability as a democracy”. For Palestinians living in Israel, however, his words were of little comfort. Read more about Slicing off Gaza is just a diplomatic nose job

The walls and outposts of the Zionist enterprise are becoming ever more conspicuous, so too are the contradictions inherent in the 57-year-old experiment of establishing a state that is both “Jewish” and “democratic” in pluralistic Palestine. The recent, albeit short-lived, decision of Britain’s Association of University Teachers (AUT) to impose an academic boycott on Bar-Ilan and Haifa Universities attests to the growing realization abroad that Israel’s policies adversely affect Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. Read more about One Hand Clapping: Applauding Tolerance and Pluralism in Israeli Academia

30 March 2005 marked the 29th anniversary of Yum El-Ard (“Land Day”) — the first mass political protest of Arab citizens of Israel, now commemorated as a national day for Palestinians worldwide. Sharif Hamadeh interviews Fr. Shehadeh Shehadeh, the activist-priest who headed the first protest in 1976. “People here are not very happy,” he says, referring to the Palestinian minority in Israel. “I’m always optimistic and I always pray for peace and work for peace - I even have a committee called Clergy for Peace - but at this time, I’m very pessimistic.” Read more about The First Yum El-Ard Protest: An interview with Fr. Shehadeh Shehadeh